Now meet the 2008 version of the Magnificent 7, all separate personalities but bonded together in one mission....to show, encourage and motivate fellow seniors and retirees to live actively and usefully.
There are no bad guys in the new story...just the vast number of seniors, many with greying hair, silvery hair, white hair, thinning hair or no hair and all entering their Golden or twilight years of their life.
Yes, all have worked very hard throughout their productive life to slip into this most respected and revered position... senior agers. But many are not living an active, purposeful life. In the short run that can be detrimental only to the individual. In the long run, it can harm the family structure and by consequence, the nation.
Therein lies the Mission and the Challenge faced by these 7 brave Active Ageing Ambassadors....to show and lead the rest on the quest towards a life filled with hope not despair, optimism not pessimism, courage not fear,love not hate, reaching out not isolated, fun and laughter not sadness and tears.
What the young can do, we can too....and MORE!
As the Nike advert line says...."JUST DO IT !"
Picture Source: Straits Times Monday 6th October 2008, page A16.
ps: Wise Owl alias uncle Dicko would like to offer the Heartiest Congratulations to my fellow
Award winners and our sincere thanks to C3A, IDA, Prudential and all the other sponsors and relevant organisations involved. Our Thanks to the various VIPs at the Night of the Stars!
More pics and blogposts upcoming.
11 comments:
Oh hi there! :D
It's always great to be the first.
Congratulations on winning the Infocomm Champion Award!
&Thanks for the encouragement :]
Hi Hansel,
Thanks for the warm wishes.
Btw, you write and express quite well in your blog.
Keep it up!
congratulations! just do it your way, no need to keep up with the young ones.
You are absolutely correct YG.
Max Surin of former Tokyo Square dedicated the final song he sang, at the Gala event, to us...and it was " My Way ".
" I did it my....way ! "
congratulations Dick from all your family in New Zealand! What a wonderful role model for the Grandkiddies.
Don't make me cry...Maree.
Thanks for all the LOVE from the south land.
On the Night of the Stars..a little star called Jordy was blissfully sleeping through it all.
Wait till he reads all this 10 years from now. What joy it must bring to all!
Congratulations on this great feat! Even though I'm 2 years late!
Thank you jlow!
How was your holiday in Japan? Did you get to see the Cherry Blossoms?
Btw,do you have a blog of your own?
Hi Uncle Dick,
Good morning.
The trip to japan was good, a bit too much shopping as requested by a few of the other people in the group, as my mum and I are not shopping people, we were kinda bored when we were drop off at shopping centres. We only saw very few cherry blossom trees still with the flowers, most trees are without the flowers already, this year the cherry blossom period ends by end March for central Japan, we had missed it. The good thing was, the hotel and food were great. Our guide also told us a lot about the history of the various places we visited. The best part for me was going to the 5th station of Mt Fuji and taking in the entire magnificant view, that was breadth taking. I also love the Japanese way of life, they are very protective of mother nature and go to extensive lengths to protect the environment. They educate the kids from young, told them the importance of trees and nature and that they too have life and so kids and adults have great respect for nature.
I don't have a blog site at the moment and won't be strting one anytime soon, I don't have time to maintain one as I spend most of my time with my family after work.
Hi jlow...o haiyo gozaimasu!
Glad you shared some sentiments of your recent trip. We have much in common after all, about travel and perspective about Japanese way of life.
I have always been a great admirer of their school system, work ethics and disipline and their genuine love for the environment inculcated from young.
In 1972,I had the rare privilege to learn firsthand about their schools and education system and some of their leading industries. I came back mightily impressed.
Haha...shopping.
I have been dead set against tour guides leading groups to"pre-arranged" shopping places. It is always a set up between all the parties involved..driver, guide, tour company, shop.
At one particular tour in China, I spoke up openly about such nonsense we were all subjected to and managed to get the entire group ( more than 40) to skip one such pre-arranged scam.
There was a price I paid! During the lunch, instead of the usual restaurant we ate at, they led us to the dirtiest establishment imaginable.
One morsel of frog legs went into my mouth and I immediately threw out! It was decayed, rotten! I was almost deliberately poisoned!
To cut this true story short...I more than survived. The guide and co, won that lunch battle but LOST the WAR...that very night!
I think they both eventually lost their jobs too, starting from the very next day.
It is a story that I haven't told yet but worth telling! Much to learn from it.
Great recount Uncle Dick. I ofen read about tour leaders doing nasty things to tourist like spitting in their food, taking them to horibble food places, showing black face and rudeness etc when tourist don't go to pre-arranged souvenir destinations, I am usually skeptical about those stories and think that can't be entirely true especially when i think tourist are like babies in a foreign land and they tend to moan a bit more about every minor unpleasant encounter, but to hear it from someone who have actually experienced this kind of treatment had me rethink about the entire tour industry, that their objective had been misplaced, instead of providing a once in a lifetime experience to us it had succumb to sucking the tourist dry!
But i do want to share that our Japan guide told us, in Japan it's different from China, they don't make commission out of bring tourist to patronise a shop. Which I could vouch, as our guide did not stoop to all these, which goes to show Japanes go about their business with dignity which I respect a lot and which should have been this way all along.
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